A short, five-step guide to jumping on the bandwagon of ‘bohemian’ in the modern times, as told by a self declared hippie.
Style and Feature explanation:
For this feature, I wanted it to look genuine and serious, even if the copy and narration had a more sarcastic tone to it.
I chose to shoot this in my bedroom, as the light walls and big window will provide high-key lighting, and used additional lighting stands to ensure the foreground was well lit. I tried to keep a lot of the items in focus, but at the same time played with the shots, at one point using a racking focus, and at others keeping the distance blurred to contrast more with shots where I was at the foreground and focused. In this way, I used blurring to keep my shots looking diverse, even as they were all shot in the same room, with the same lighting, with a few of the same items.
I played with timing, speeding up the video at one point, and at another time showing photos in quick succession to show time progressing. Again, with the limited room for different views and ‘backdrops’, I wanted to try and keep the short film looking diverse and have variety to my shot composition.
The tone of the piece is very tongue in cheek. I wanted to choose a topic of content that I knew a lot about, and at the same time, try my hand at comedy writing and performance, something I do not usually get an opportunity to do. As someone who regularly engages in all the activities I was mentioning, I don’t feel guilty. Instead I’m glad I presented it the way I did, and liked the convenience of already having all the ‘props’.
I chose to make this film less artistic or focusing on landscapes, and instead in the style of a BuzzFeed video, like their How To Guides or the Try Guys. I featured my face a lot, something I do not usually do on videos, and chose to do an omniscient narration so I could focus on shooting, and focus on producing high quality audio to accompany the visuals.
Clare Bonnyman 